this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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PSA: Many Lemmy instances are currently experiencing massive automated sign-ups (bots)! If you run an instance with open sign-ups, please read! (zemmy.cc)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Zetaphor@zemmy.cc to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/177673

Cross posting this here for visibility since lemmy.ml federation has been very hit or miss the last week. Original post from @sunaurus@lemm.ee

Today, a bunch of new instances appeared in the top of the user count list. It appears that these instances are all being bombarded by bot sign-ups.

For now, it seems that the bots are especially targeting instances that have:

  • Open sign-ups
  • No captcha
  • No e-mail verification

I have put together a spreadsheet of some of the most suspicious cases here.

If this is affecting you, I would highly recommend considering one of the following options:

  1. Close sign-ups entirely
  2. Only allow sign-ups with applications
  3. Enable e-mail verification + captcha for sign-ups

Additionally, I would recommend pre-emptively banning as many bot accounts as possible, before they start posting spam!

Please comment below if you have any questions or anything useful to add.

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[–] fax@sffa.community 1 points 1 year ago

I'm an admin from https://sffa.community

We did notice a large amount of bot sign-ups early on. We already ha email verification on and they never made it past that stage.

We have since turned on CAPTCHA and now they aren't signing up any longer.

We've purged the bot accounts from our database.

We are working on generating organic content but we've only been open for a couple weeks so I just ask that other instances bear with us. We've a very niche community of sci-fi and fantasy geeks. We'd love to be federated again.